A widespread disruption hit Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently, taking numerous websites and applications offline for more than two hours. This incident starkly reminded us of how fragile our global technology infrastructure truly is.
The service interruption began in the early morning hours, impacting everything from major banks and popular gaming platforms to entertainment services. By mid-morning, Amazon confirmed that most affected sites and apps were back up, though they were still working to resolve a backlog of requests.
Prominent services like WhatsApp, the British government’s official website, its tax services, payment platform Venmo, and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase all faced issues. Even games provided by a major news outlet were affected. A long list of other businesses, including Amazon itself, Hulu, Snapchat, Ring doorbells, Fortnite, and McDonald’s, reported service problems.
The precise cause of the outage wasn’t immediately apparent, and there was no evidence to suggest a cyberattack. Initially, Amazon described it as an “operational” problem impacting several services in their Northern Virginia region.
Industry experts quickly pointed out that this event once again highlighted the internet’s heavy dependence on a handful of major technology providers, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. When one of these giants falters, millions of users can be impacted. This mirrors a similar, more extensive internet blackout last year, which was triggered by a faulty software update from a less-known cybersecurity firm.
Thousands of clients depend on Amazon Web Services for their most intricate and data-heavy tasks, from streaming video and hosting web applications to managing vast archives of digital data. Amazon’s cloud division has established a global infrastructure, enabling businesses to reach customers worldwide efficiently. This allows companies to dynamically scale their operations without the need for significant investments in expensive physical hardware.
Harry Halpin, CEO of NymVPN, a virtual private network provider, suggested the problem might stem from a technical glitch in one of Amazon’s primary data centers. However, he emphasized the inherent lack of transparency in cloud platform operations, making it impossible to ascertain the true cause, even in the case of a cyberattack, unless Amazon provides a detailed explanation.
Dr. Halpin, whose company supplies VPN services to soldiers, recounted receiving urgent emails from troops on the front lines asking about the cause of the disruption. He noted that this reliance on a few cloud providers isn’t unique to Ukraine, but is a widespread issue among many Western governments.
“When an entire nation’s digital backbone rests on a handful of providers, all based in one country, and any one of them can fail at any time—whether due to malicious intent or simple technical error—that presents an incredibly dangerous scenario,” he stated.
“Everyone accepts this as normal,” Dr. Halpin, a former MIT research scientist, remarked about the internet’s consolidation around a few providers. “But it’s fundamentally not normal.”
The affected “us-east-1” region in Northern Virginia houses one of Amazon’s largest data centers, explained Amro Al-Said Ahmad, a computer science lecturer. He acknowledged that “cloud computing generally performs well for daily tasks,” but warned that even a minor flaw, such as a flawed update, could bring down the entire system.
Media advocates highlighted that this outage, which also impacted secure communication apps like Signal and other digital tools, underscores an urgent need for greater diversification within cloud computing.
“When one provider fails, essential services linked to it collapse simultaneously,” stated Corinne Cath-Speth, digital head for the free speech advocacy group, Article 19.
She further asserted that “the foundational infrastructure supporting democratic discussion, independent journalism, and secure communication should not be concentrated in the hands of just a few corporations.”
Interestingly, Amazon’s stock price remained largely unaffected in premarket trading, indicating that investors weren’t overly concerned by the disruption. In the first half of the year, AWS contributed almost 20% to Amazon’s total sales and a significant 60% to its operating profit.
Mehdi Daoudi, founder of internet performance monitoring firm Catchpoint, noted that two decades prior, many businesses maintained their own data centers. Now, most gravitate toward cloud services offered by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Chinese tech giants. However, he observed a recent trend where increasing cloud costs are driving some companies to reconsider self-hosting.
This recent outage could intensify calls for businesses and governments to prioritize regional cloud service providers.
Following Monday’s disruption, Alexandra Geese, a German member of the European Parliament, asserted that crucial European data and digital infrastructure ought to be hosted within Europe, managed by European companies, and subject to E.U. jurisdiction.
She concluded by stating that the outage served as a “powerful reminder that Europe’s digital sovereignty is not a theoretical idea, but a fundamental aspect of its security and resilience.”